Strawberry Cream Pie with Chocolate Graham Cracker Crust

LUCY BURDETTE: Here in Connecticut, it's the thick of strawberry season--hopefully they are making an appearance where you live, too. These gems hardly bear a resemblance to the mealy specimens you can get year round in the supermarket. So I thought you might be in the mood for a special, though pretty easy, dessert.

Background: My series character, Hayley Snow's favorite restaurant in Key West (a real place, my favorite too) is called Seven Fish. Hayley visits and reviews Seven Fish in the opening chapter of the first book in the series, AN APPETITE FOR MURDER. After sampling the sautéed grouper sushi rolls, the yellowtail snapper in a light curry cream sauce, the grilled mahi-mahi with roasted potatoes, the meatloaf, and the banana chicken, Hayley and her dining partner can't stomach the idea of ordering dessert.

Frankly, I think it was a big mistake to miss their strawberry cream pie. I studied it last time I visited the restaurant. It seemed to be mostly whipped cream and berries, all layered into a chocolate graham cracker crust. Here’s my version--hope you enjoy it!

Ingredients for the crust:

1 package chocolate graham crackers, crushed to crumbs (about 1 and 1/4 cups)

4 Tbsp butter, melted

2 Tbsp sugar

Whir the crackers to fine crumbs--in your food processor is easiest. Stir in the sugar and melted butter and combine well. Press the crumb mixture into a pie pan (mine is 10 inches) and tap it firmly up the sides of the pan into a crust, using your fingers, the back of a spoon, or a water glass. Bake the crust for 15 minutes at 350 and let it cool.

Ingredients for the filling:

1 and 1/2 lb strawberries (I might not make this unless it's close to strawberry season)

2 cups whipping cream

4 oz cream cheese, softened

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup powdered sugar

Wash, hull, and slice the strawberries, and then set them aside. In one bowl, whip the cream cheese. In another, whip the cream and the vanilla until stiff. Add the sugar and whip that in. Gradually mix the cream cheese with the whipped cream until it's all nicely combined. (You may cut back on the sugar if you prefer the dessert even less sweet--and depending on how ripe your strawberries are.) 

In the chocolate crust, alternate two layers of strawberries with layers of whipped cream, ending with the third layer of strawberries, artistically arranged. Chill thoroughly. Serve and sit back to watch your guests swoon. Okay, maybe you aren't having guests for a while, so swoon while you eat it with your pandemic pals!

How are you treating yourselves these days?

Celebrating MURDER WITH GANACHE

 LUCY BURDETTE:  I know it's What We're Writing week, but honestly I'll be surprised if I write one word today. Because today's launch day for MURDER WITH GANACHE, the fourth Key West foodie mystery and I'm celebrating! I loved writing this book (except for the parts I didn't love, LOL) and I'm very grateful for all the help I had along the way. (Here's looking at you Reds...)

I think there must be writers who make up everything about a book--the setting, the characters, the story...but for this Key West series, I can't seem to help taking things from real life on this island and tweaking them so they become part of the book. And since I received my early author copies, I've enjoyed taking them around to thank the real life people who make a little appearance. I'll give you a few examples.

Tonka on Benchie

Across from the Green Parrot Bar, there is a corner deli--owned by Fred Saunders--famous for staples such as Cuban coffee, Cuban mix sandwiches, 5 hour energy drinks, aspirin, and beer. Outside the door sits a double bench, which is occupied over the day by coffee drinkers, homeless people, business lunchers, and folks listening to the live music across the street. In the mysterious way that Facebook works, the bench has developed its own page and an entire persona. Lots of people from across the world take pictures of themselves sitting on "Benchie." As I was working on MURDER WITH GANACHE, one of my critique partners, Ang Pompano and I came up with the idea at the same time: There would be a clue discovered on Benchie's Facebook page.

Fred and Lucy on Benchie

"I brought Rory’s Facebook photo up again on my iPhone and tried to explain to Allison and my mother why a bench in front of a deli would have a Facebook page. “It’s a novelty,” I said. “One person set the page up, and now the bench has thousands of friends. People take pictures of themselves on the bench when they’re visiting, drinking Cuban coffee in the morning or beer at night. The bench herself posts about the weather and the bands playing at the bar across the street. It’s just a crazy, fun Key West thing.”
    “But what was Rory doing there and who are these people?” Allison asked, peering at the screen. Her eyes were wild with worry and confusion.
    “We’re going to figure all that out,” I said, patting her leg. “We’ll find him.” MWG

I could go on and on about all the places where I got ideas and introduce you to every one of the characters. I'll leave you with just one more--you may remember Lorenzo, the tarot card reader, from the previous books. Here's the real Lorenzo (aka Ron)--isn't he cute?

"Anxious to get a tarot card reading from Lorenzo, I pushed through throngs of tourists enjoying the Mallory Square party. The last few days had left me feeling sad and unsettled--I hoped he could shed some positive light on the future." MWG
 

Remember a couple of months ago when our new Red, Susan Elia MacNeal, did a post on cocktails? It was so adorable--I got to wondering whether she could come up with something to celebrate this new book in a special way. Of course, she could and she did. And so we invite you to join the party and pour a glass of "Murder with Ganache!"

"Murder with Ganache"

(to celebrate the new book!) 

1 part Kahlua or other coffee-flavored liquor

1 part half-and-half

1 part Godiva or other chocolate-flavored liquor

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a sprinkle of cocoa powder or shavings of dark chocolate.

Thank you so much for indulging me today! And thank you for reading our books and our blog--without you guys, we'd be spitting in the wind.


And PS, if you haven't got around to it yet, MURDER WITH GANACHE is available wherever books are sold!

Dessert with Ganache!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I had a wonderful writerly get-together in Portland over the past few days. Charles Salzberg, honorary Red Jenny Milchman and I did a packed-to-the-rafters gig Thursday at Longfellow Books, one of our area's great indy bookstores. (The crowd was even more amazing when you consider they had to walk there through windchills of -15.) The next night, we hit an oyster bar with Charles' hosts, writer/blogger Brynne Betz and her partner John. It was a great dinner, sitting at picnic tables with kids and spouses, trading around traditional New England fare tapas-style.

But the best part of the evening was afterwards, at John and Brynne's house. Brynne had baked a dessert buffet to die for: coconut-covered carrot cake, dark chocolate layer cake with mocha frosting, and best of all? Homemade peppermint patties. I did the usual, "Oh, I'll just have a little slice," but after the first bite of carrot cake, I would have stabbed anyone who got between me and my plate. I was going to have a ladylike taste of one peppermint patty; I wound up eating five. My family's gratitude (or our grunts of pleasure as we wolfed down her baking) touched our hostess's heart, and she sent us home with two enormous slabs of cake and several patties, which, sad to say, didn't last very long.

I don't know if I have the patience to hand-dip each patty into a chocolate bath, but I do have a recipe that has all the basics of peppermint patties in an easy-to-make form. And, in honor of our own Lucy's upcoming Murder with Ganache, this delicious dessert uses - you guessed it - chocolate ganache!

Peppermint Patty Pie

1 graham cracker crust

3 c confectioners sugar
2 1/2 T butter
1/4 t vanilla extract
1 t peppermint oil or 1 T peppermint extract (you can also put in peppermint schnapps to taste along with the oil or extract. The oil give it a very sharp, pungent mint flavor.)
3 T whipping cream

8 oz or 1 1/2 c dark chocolate chips (I like Ghiradelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate ones)
3/4 c whipping cream
1/4 c sugar

Cream together the confectioner's sugar, butter, vanilla extract and peppermint, adding the cream last. If you use a mixer, you can get it nice and smooth; if you're lazy like me, do it with a spoon. Is your family really going to complain about some lumps? It should have a paste-like consistency. 

On a baking cloth/wax paper/parchment, roll the filling into a circle sized to fit your crust. Put it in the crust (you will probably need to poke it here and there to make it fit well,) then chill in the frig while you make the ganache.
 
 
For the ganache: put the chocolate, cream and sugar in a double boiler (you don't have to have a fancy one; I literally use one pot inside another) and heat at medium until the chocolate melts. Whisk it silky-smooth, then remove it from the stove and let it cool for about fifteen minutes.



Take the crust + filling from the frig and pour the ganache over it. Replace in the frig for another half hour or until you can't stand the wait any more and you have to eat it. 

While you're enjoying your Peppermint Patty Pie, be sure to head over to Goodreads and enter the contest to get a copy of Lucy's Murder with Ganache. And at Lucy's Facebook page, you can enter to win a $25 bookstore gift card and a bundle of cozy mysteries!  

How We Treat Our Characters @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: We Reds probably seem like nice enough people when you read our blog--or even meet us in person. Sweet ladies who love to chat about Downton Abbey, funny incidents in our lives, what we're reading, oh, and food. But the minute you pick up one of our mysteries, you'll see what we do to our characters--the opposite of sweet! Because we need tension to keep the reader reading, and one of the best ways to up the tension is to torque up the pressure on the characters.

Last year when I was writing MURDER WITH GANACHE, I knew I needed a gut-wrenching scene out on the water. I persuaded my husband and brother-in-law to rent a little motorboat to take us around Key West. It was a cold, gray day--perfect for the scene I was imagining, in which my character Hayley Snow's brother had gone missing. We came upon the little harbor where a small group of live-aboards anchor their boats. I won't spoil the story by telling you what they find, but it's a grim day for Hayley and her family. 

Here's a tiny snippet: 

"Ray started up the engine and steered the boat out of the little channel into the big channel that fed into the ocean. A thick layer of gray clouds hung down like a quilt of cotton batting, blending into the steely water and obscuring the horizon. The choppy waves spanked the hull. Contrasting with her orange life vest, Allison's color changed from merely pale to gray like the clouds. She gripped my father's hand and pinched her lips together."

The fun thing about writing this series is that Hayley and her mother react to all bad situations by cooking. And eating. So after the terrible day on the water, they make spanakopita, one of my favorite meals of all time. The layers of crispy, buttery filo, the tangy bite of the feta cheese, the snippets of dill and pockets of spinach... Next time someone close to you has a really bad day, treat them to this dish--they are bound to feel a little bit better...
 
 Hayley Snow's Spanakopita

Ingredients

2 frozen packages chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
14 oz Feta cheese, crumbled
4 oz cottage cheese
1 bunch scallions, washed, chopped and sauteed in olive oil
1-2 Tbsp fresh dill, chopped
4 or 5 twists freshly-ground black pepper
4 eggs, beaten
1 package filo pastry, thawed in refrigerator
8 Tbsp butter, melted (1 stick)
3 Tbsp olive oil

The filo pastry can be found in a box in the frozen foods department. A day or two ahead of time, take one of the rolls of filo out of the freezer and move to the refrigerator to thaw. Also thaw your two packages of frozen spinach. When thawed, squeeze them completely dry (I use my hands for this.) Crumble your feta cheese into a big bowl and mix in the dry spinach and the cottage cheese. Next, chop and saute your scallions and add them, along with chopped dill and pepper to taste. Beat the eggs, add them to the bowl and mix everything well.

Now you are ready for assembly. Melt the butter and mix with the olive oil. In a 9 x 13 inch pan, lay out the first sheet of filo, being careful not to tear it. With a clean pastry brush, paint the filo with butter/oil mixture. Repeat until you have 10 layers. (Patience is a virtue here as it's very easy to tear the sheets. But don't panic, pat the pieces back in--no one will notice a few tears among all that flaky buttery goodness.) It's smart to cover the unused filo with a damp cloth while you work.

Once you have ten painted sheets, dump the spinach and cheese mixture into the pan and spread it evenly to the edges. Then repeat the process of buttering the next ten layers.

You may cover this with plastic wrap and store in the fridge a day ahead. Preheat the oven to 350, then bake until risen and golden, about 45" to an hour. Cut into squares and serve with Greek salad.

We're celebrating the fact that MURDER WITH GANACHE is almost here by giving away two copies! Leave us a comment telling us what your favorite comfort food is and you'll be entered in the drawing. To see more pictures of Key West and how the island shapes the mysteries, take a look at Lucy's Pinterest board called "Key West--the Character."

What I'm Writing by Lucy Burdette

LUCY BURDETTE: We're confessing this week, right? Panic is a familiar feeling when I'm writing a book--right now with the fifth Key West food critic mystery my panic takes the form of wishing I knew what was happening. How can I possibly make something decent out of my sketchy ideas? This is usually the point where my husband suggests I review my synopsis.  And I do. As usual, it's got more holes than substance. 

Why the heck is Hayley Snow doing what she's doing? Where's the conflict? What are her stakes? Why would anyone care? Here's what I know: It's Christmas time, a magical season in Key West. There will be scenes at the holiday parade. And the lighted boat parade. And holiday parties, lots of parties. 



 
There's a new chef in town, fresh from New York City, and she's opening a restaurant on the harbor. But she's pretty sure someone is out to ruin her business before it gets off the ground…and she needs Hayley's help. But why Hayley??


 



The good news is, I've been here before. With every book. Even MURDER WITH GANACHE, which is coming in February. Ganache and I are in a honeymoon phase--We think this could be the best one yet! 




 




There are cupcakes and Hemingway cats and a wedding and way too much family, including Hayley's grumpy fifteen-year old stepbrother.

 




And I've just received a few galleys and I'm dying to give one away. Here's how you enter your name in the drawing:

I need a title for number five. It should have some of these elements: food, cooking, Key West, holidays (without coming right out and saying "Christmas".) So how's that? A chance at a galley for a title. Don't be afraid to sound silly. Your attempts can't be worse than what I've come up with!

And while you're thinking, here's the opening for MURDER WITH GANACHE (which can, of course, be pre-ordered):

Chapter One

       I’m in an open relationship with salt and butter.  Michele Catalano

    Faster than a speeding Kitchenaid mixer, I scraped the freshly-squeezed lime juice and zested lime peel into the bowl and beat the batter to a creamy pale green. Inside the oven, the first set of cupcakes rose gracefully, releasing their sweet and sour citrus fragrance into the tiny galley of our houseboat.
    Then my cell phone bleated: Jim Snow. AKA Dad.
    My father isn’t big on phone conversations. My father isn’t big on conversations, period. Clients, he has to butter up because he needs something from them. But I could count on the fingers of one hand the times we’d chatted since my near-arrest for murder last fall.
    So when his name flashed on the screen, I set down the whisk, abandoning the “do not answer” policy I’d adopted in order to survive the week leading up to my best friend Connie’s wedding. Something had to be wrong.
    “Hi Dad, what’s up?” I asked, trying to sound cheerful, when wary was what I felt.
    “Good news, Hayley Catherine Snow!” he said, with the faux heartiness he reserved for business associates. And using my full name, which he reserved for times I’d gotten into trouble. “The whole family’s coming to the wedding.”
    I whooshed out a breath of relief--he was just lagging a beat and a half behind his wife. “I know. Allison RSVP’d weeks ago. You’re all set with a corner suite at the Casa Marina. You’ll love everything but the bill.” My stepmother Allison was organized to a fault. She had to be, as a chemist. Though why that didn’t translate into an ability to follow a simple recipe was beyond me. Hopeless in the kitchen, my mom always said, when she couldn’t restrain herself from an edgy comment.
    The oven timer began to ding. I donned a red silicone mitten, pulled the cupcakes out, and slid them onto the stovetop.
    “The whole family,” my father repeated. “Rory’s coming too.”
     “Rory’s coming?”
    My fifteen-year-old  stepbrother. To be honest, I was already stressed about the upcoming week, visualizing how I might handle the family dynamics between my mother and her new boyfriend, whom I hadn’t met except on Skype, and my father and stepmother. Not to mention juggling a high-strung bride while baking two hundred cupcakes for her wedding reception. Not to mention her husband-to-be’s first-ever art reception.
    Rory had been adorable as a toddler. As a teen? Not so much.
    A surly, pimply adolescent boy would not, no way, be an asset.
    “I was hoping you could find him a place to sleep,” my dad continued. “Otherwise he’ll end up on the couch in our sitting room.” His voice rolled out ominously like the music from Jaws. I was pretty certain he didn’t care much for Rory in his current iteration either--only he didn’t have the luxury of saying so.
    “I don’t think I can, Dad. You guys are arriving today. It’s spring break. The hotels in Key West have been sold out for months. I might be able to get a bead on a bunk in a youth hostel. But between us, I think that’s asking for trouble. You don’t know what kind of roommates he’d get or what they might be in to.”
    He cleared his throat. “Might there be room on your houseboat? I know he’d love to have some special time with you.”
    “No can do,” I said briskly. Rory and I hadn’t lived together enough to bond quite like sister and brother. After my parents’ divorce, I spent only alternate weekends and Wednesdays with Dad. And the weekends dwindled further once he remarried and moved two towns away. We’d never shared a room, or a tent, or for that matter, a mother.
    “Think Airstream trailer on the high seas. The smallest model. Between me, Miss Gloria, two cats, wedding favors, and hundreds of cupcakes, we don’t have room to spit.” Was I being uncharitable? I looked around at the common spaces of our tiny houseboat, the counters in the galley covered with cupcakes, cupcake batter, zested limes, dirty pots and pans, and Evinrude, my gray tiger cat, eying it all from a stool beside the stove.
    My father fell silent, which made me feel awful.
    “What about Eric Altman? Didn’t your mother stay in his guest room in January?”
    I groaned. How did he even know this? When I moved down to Key West from New Jersey last fall, I’d assured my old friend Eric I would only ask this kind of favor in case of emergency. He’d insisted on hosting mom, because she’d been so kind to him when he was a troubled teen. It wasn’t fair to foist Rory on him.
    But then I pictured messy, grumpy Rory camped out on our single couch not five feet from the room where I’d be desperate to sleep. This was definitely an emergency.
   

On What We're Writing...

LUCY BURDETTE: Okay I'm writing madly, frantically down the home stretch to my June 30 deadline, trying not to fall into plot holes and character stereotypes. So the idea of coming up with a creative blog topic had me quivering. Until I had the idea--yes--let's tell the tiniest snatches of what we're writing. We promise you, these words are likely to change--for the better hopefully--but here's a sneak peek into what's whirling in our brains.

From MURDER WITH GANACHE, coming February 2014:
 
"This is the Key West police. Come out with your hands up," shouted a fierce voice, its volume magnified by a megaphone. "Trained police dog here. Put down your weapon and come out or we let him run."
    The man in the room with us fired his gun through the door and both Daisy and I screamed. I pressed her to the ground, my body shielding hers, my ears ringing painfully in the silence after the blast.
    "Back off or I kill them both," our man yelled.

(Me Lucy again--can you tell I'm using what I learned in my Citizens Police Academy?)

HALLIE EPHRON: Wow! Love it, Lucy. (But what are they having for dessert??)

So here's the opening of my novel, working title NIGHT NIGHT, SLEEP TIGHT, coming out some time after I finish writing it...

Arthur Unger slides open the glass door and steps out onto his flagstone patio. He's had a few drinks but he doesn't feel them. It's late at night, and though the sky is clear and there's no moon, there are no stars, either. There never are. Between ambient light and air pollution, he'd have to drive to Mount Baldy to see Orion's Belt. The sky is . . . he gazes up at it. Opaque? Pitch black? Inky? He shrugs. His ex-wife wrote their scene descriptions. He was always the plotmeister, architect to her decorator, though at that moment he thinks it's obvious what's going to happen next.

RHYS BOWEN: I have just started a new Royal Spyness book (Queen of Hearts) this week so anything I share here is subject to being ripped apart and substituted but here is my current opening paragraph.

I was sitting in white wicker chair under a spreading chestnut tree on a manicured lawn. Behind me the stately battlements of Kingsdowne Place, seat of the Dukes of Eynsford were reflected in the perfect mirror of the lake, its surface ruffled only by a pair of gliding swans. Before me was a tea table, groaning under tiers of cucumber and smoked salmon sandwiches, strawberries and cream, eclairs, Victoria sponges, petit fours and scones with clotted cream. It was about the most perfect afternoon one could wish for, one of those rare English summer days when the only sounds are the buzzing of bees among the roses, the clickety clack of a distant lawnmower and the thwack of ball on bat at the cricket match down in the village.

LUCY BURDETTE: Oh, I love these! Hallie, you don't usually write in first person, do you? And Rhys, can we all come for tea? I'm sure that beautiful scene is going to be blasted to smithereens soon though...(and PS Hallie, they are having chocolate ganache for dessert in my book, of course...)

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Well, THE WRONG GIRL comes out in September, and I am so excited! But I am in the midst of what MIGHT be titled TRUTH BE TOLD. And this opening is EARLIER than a first draft. It's just--MAYBE what it might be.

(And it is incredibly fascinating to see how different we all are!)

“I know it’s legal. But it’s terrible.” Jane Ryland winced as the Sandoval’s pale wooden bedframe hit the tall grass in the overgrown front yard and shattered into three jagged pieces. “The cops throwing someone’s stuff out the window. I mean, please.  It’s right out of Dickens, you know? Eviction? There’s got to be a better way.”

Terrible facts and great pictures.  A perfect newspaper story.  She turned to Casey. “You got that on camera, right?”

Casey didn’t take his eye from the viewfinder. “Rolling and recording,” he said.

ROSEMARY HARRIS: You gals are much braver than I am. I would never dream of showing any early versions to anyone.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Here's part of a scene from To Dwell in Darkness, due out sometime in 2014. This is in my "Unplaced Scenes" in Scrivener, so not sure yet where it will go, or even if it will stay in the book, but I like it.

--Wren. The girl from nowhere. Too thin, although they didn’t suffer lack in the flat in the Caledonian Road. With her wispy brown hair that never stayed in place and eyes the color of dark honey, she did make him think of a small brown bird. Her movements were quick, too, and often eerily quiet. When he’d asked her, early on, if that was her real name, she’d just smiled and said, “I was given it,” leaving him to wonder what she meant.
She never talked about herself. Not that everyone in the Caledonian Road gave out a potted history—and even if they did it didn’t mean it was true—but Wren said less than anyone. But they shed clues just as they shed skin and hair, unconsciously. A word here, a word there, a reference to a mother or a father or a sister or something that had happened at school. But not Wren.
He started to watch her, first with a copper’s curiosity, because she was a challenge, a puzzle to be solved. She was a Londoner, he was sure of that from her accent. Middle-class. But then they were mostly a middle-class bunch, living in pseudo-squalor, and he thought that any of them could have gone home to beds more comfortable than sleeping bags on the flat’s old board floors. Except Wren.
And then he began to watch not just out of idle curiosity, but because he realized he liked her. They all had motives, this bunch, they always did. Rebellion, idealism, a need to be different, a need to be noticed. But Wren, Wren simply was, and he thought he’d never known anyone with such a talent for living in the moment.--




Rhys (Debs here again,) I want to live in the opening scene from your Georgie book:-)

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Well, I have just barely begun working on the 9th Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne book. I've been spending lots of time researching popular culture and policing as they were in 1952 and 1970, and trying to figure out the crime - always the hardest part for me! I usually start with an image and work out from there. The picture in my head for this one (tentatively titled HID FROM OUR EYES) is the body of a young woman left naked in the middle of a country road in the small hours of the night. How she got there and why, I have no idea. Yet. The (also tentative) beginning:

It always starts with a birth. And a death. The old man held the paper in his hand and weighed the two ideas in his head. Birth. Death. He had known some hippy chick back in the day who’d been into Indian religions. She had told him the goddess Kali was the goddess of both birth and death, because every life brought into the world carried its own ending. What she didn’t say – and hell, maybe the Indians had already figured this out and she just didn’t know it – was that every death was also, potentially, a birth. A new life for somebody. Freedom, money, the end of guilt and shame – there was a lot of stuff came through the back door when the body was carried out the front.

He folded the paper and stood up slowly. He had arrangements to make. It was time to go home.